In 2005, the Bush budget for fiscal year 2006 passed the House of Representatives by two votes. One key vote was that of Congressman Edolphus Towns of New York's Tenth District.

As I wrote in 2006,

I had a conversation with Congressman Towns' chief of staff last year, after he failed to vote against the republican budget because he was, and I quote, "stuck in traffic on Capitol Hill". This because he had left the chamber to get some rest, it being rather late at night, and was unaware that the vote was coming up; after all, the man is of an age when most Americans, certainly those few of us with retirement benefits as generous as those accruing to Members of Congress, want to be retired someplace on a porch in Florida. So he took the night off, as it were.

She didn't disagree with me that this was a very feeble excuse.

That exchange between myself and Karen Johnson, Congressman Towns' Chief of Staff, was documented in an email I sent to the board of directors of New Democratic Majority on November 18th, 2005.

I just spoke to his chief of staff, Karen Johnson; she apologizes profusely [for Towns absence from the budget vote], and basically reiterates that he was stuck in traffic outside of the Capitol.

That is pretty lame, and I told her so; she didn't disagree. I mentioned that Towns draws a taxpayer salary to do nothing but vote, and that this kind of excuse in a very close vote just wasn't acceptable.

The 2006 Federal budget was notable, per the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, for deep cuts in domestic spending and shifting the Federal tax burden downwards to states and municipalities. Grants to Medicaid declined by $10.7 billion,, or 4.5%; grants for all other domestic programs, at 1.99% of GDP in 2001, were cut to 1.75%; all told, the funding shortfall compared to 2001 levels, whether they were themselves adequate or not, amounted to $31 billion.

That budget passed in part because Ed Towns was too tired to vote on it. Considering how poor his district is, and how reliant on Federal grants, it's fair to ask whether district residents are getting the best representation they can, or whether it's time for a change.